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34,219 Gained External Followed Links...How?

I am analysis a competitor with 34,219 gained External Followed Links just in the last month. Their total external followed links are nearly at 300,000. They only have 1% Nofollow links and 11% NoFollowed Linking Root Domains.

Would you be able to provide some ideas on how someone can obtain this amount of followed link organically? Would it be possible they are using a 2nd tier PPC service that post ads with follow links in relevant pages and this is what is helping with the tremendous amounts of external followed links?

I would consider this company on the smaller end. However, their DA is almost 70.

3 Responses

Echoing what others have said, there are a variety of reasons this might have happened, but 32k links in a short period would be VERY high even for a site that has something go viral. Organically, they could have had this many new links (not linking root domains) show up due to being linked to site-wide on a smaller number of sites, i.e. they gain links from five very large websites, all of which link to them in a sidebar.

You should definitely look at the number of linking root domains and what those root domains are, rather than the total number of links. Say you get a link on a trustworthy website in a "resources" section that happens to be site-wide or close to site-wide, and that results in 1,000 links. That is not actually 1,000 links in Google's eyes - it is one link, but one link from a trustworthy website.

If this competitor gained 32k links very quickly and you can't see a good reason, like a huge piece of viral content or some new site-wide links that are of a good quality, then I'd be suspicious - the method of link acquisition might be spammy. But it's impossible to say without seeing the example.

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